Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe will go one day

Zimbabweans go to the polls tomorrow with few illusions about the result.

Victory will be assured for Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF, mainly by rigging the vote, but also because the opposition is divided. A few facts will illustrate the dire conditions in which this exercise is taking place.

The confiscation of white-owned farms and the brutal treatment of the black population have transformed the country from a food exporter into a basket case dependent on foreign food aid. More than a third of Zimbabweans have fled. Inflation is running at more than 100,000 per cent, unemployment at more than 80 per cent. Average life expectancy has dropped to 37.

The wrecking of a once vibrant economy damages the reputation of the southern part of the continent and, more broadly, of all of it up to the Sahara. Yet election observers from the Southern African Development Community have the effrontery to claim that everything is in place for a free vote.

Western monitors have been barred, in favour of those from "friendly" countries such as China, Iran, Libya and Russia. Once again, Zimbabwe's neighbours and a clutch of autocratic outsiders are helping Mugabe prolong his hideous misrule.

Gordon Brown, who has a particular interest in Africa, rightly refused to meet the president at a summit between the continent and the EU in Lisbon last December. The Prime Minister is in a difficult position with regard to Zimbabwe, in that any criticism will be used by Mugabe to boost his popularity by claiming a neo-colonial plot.

Nevertheless, Britain should be pushing for tougher EU sanctions and planning for the rescue programme that Zimbabwe will need once the president has gone. Simba Makoni, a former finance minister who is one of two candidates standing against Mugabe, has said it could take 10 to 15 years to restore the economy.

Mr Brown could co-ordinate the response of America, the EU, Japan and the international financial institutions to this process. Mugabe looks set to "win" tomorrow, but, sooner rather than later, Zimbabwe will be shot of a dreadful old despot.